Daniel Webster eBook

“He was in the perfection of
manly beauty and strength; his form filled out
to its finest proportions, and his bearing, as he stood
before the vast multitude, that of absolute dignity
and power. His manner of speaking was deliberate
and commanding. I never heard him when his
manner was so grand and appropriate; ... when he ended
the minds of men were wrought up to an uncontrollable
excitement, and then followed three tremendous
cheers, inappropriate indeed, but as inevitable
as any other great movement of nature.”

He had held the vast audience mute for over two hours,
as John Quincy Adams said in his diary, and finally
their excited feelings found vent in cheers.
He spoke greatly because he felt greatly. His
emotions, his imagination, his entire oratorical temperament
were then full of quick sensibility. When he
finished writing the imaginary speech of John Adams
in the quiet of his library and the silence of the
morning hour, his eyes were wet with tears.

A year passed by after this splendid display of eloquence,
and then the second congressional period, which had
been so full of work and intellectual activity and
well-earned distinction, closed, and he entered upon
that broader field which opened to him in the Senate
of the United States, where his greatest triumphs
were still to be achieved.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TARIFF OF 1828 AND THE REPLY TO HAYNE.

The new dignity conferred on Mr. Webster by the people
of Massachusetts had hardly been assumed when he was
called upon to encounter a trial which must have made
all his honors seem poor indeed. He had scarcely
taken his seat when he was obliged to return to New
York, where failing health had arrested Mrs. Webster’s
journey to the capital, and where, after much suffering,
she died, January 21, 1828. The blow fell with
terrible severity upon her husband. He had many
sorrows to bear during his life, but this surpassed
all others. His wife was the love of his youth,
the mother of his children, a lovely woman whose strong
but gentle influence for good was now lost to him
irreparably. In his last days his thoughts reverted
to her, and as he followed her body to the grave,
on foot in the wet and cold, and leading his children
by the hand, it must indeed have seemed as if the wine
of life had been drunk and only the lees remained.
He was excessively pale, and to those who looked upon
him seemed crushed and heart-broken.

The only relief was to return to his work and to the
excitement of public affairs; but the cloud hung over
him long after he was once more in his place in the
Senate. Death had made a wound in his life which
time healed but of which the scar remained. Whatever
were Mr. Webster’s faults, his affection for
those nearest to him, and especially for the wife of
his youth, was deep and strong.